Young adults’ Eucharistic devotion the inspiration behind ‘24 Hours for the Lord’ event

 

Vatican City, Mar 27, 2025 / 12:45 pm (CNA).

Now in its 12th year, the Church’s “24 Hours for the Lord” Lenten initiative is believed to have been inspired by the Eucharistic devotion of a group of young Catholics in Rome.

On the night of March 12-13, 2013, just hours before Cardinal Jorge Bergolio would be elected pope, young adults were gathered in prayer before the Eucharist in a small church dedicated to youth just outside the Vatican.

It was not the first time. A few weeks prior, the group had also spent all night in adoration at a different church as Pope Benedict XVI was ending his papacy and preparing to leave the Vatican to fly by helicopter to the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, Italy.

One day the following year, Pope Francis announced that the whole Church would spend “24 Hours for the Lord,” with a special Lenten penance liturgy at the Vatican, while some of Rome’s churches remained open all night for adoration and confession.

“One of the most beautiful visions that we had when we were young was to put Jesus as the protagonist, at the center,” Daniele Venturi, a young adult leader in Rome at the time, told EWTN News in a Feb. 4 interview.

“Over the years, we experienced these intense and important moments of Eucharistic adoration … where we really saw Jesus attracting,” he added. “[Jesus] says [in the Gospel of John], ‘I will draw everyone to myself,’ and we saw him in action.”

“One of the most significant nights that ignited this Eucharistic spark was in the moment between the resignation of Benedict XVI and the beginning of the pontificate of Pope Francis,” Venturi added. “We were right inside this church [St. Lawrence in Piscibus] in an intense prayer that lasted several days, 24 hours, day and night.”

Venturi, 55, died on March 13, two days after he was hospitalized and placed in intensive care for an unexpected illness.

The layman, who was deeply devoted to his Catholic faith and to sharing it with young people from the time of his own youth, was founder and president of an Italian association called “Papaboys,” created after World Youth Day with Pope John Paul II in 2000.

Members of Papaboys and other young adults who frequented the San Lorenzo Center often joined together in prayer, including many 24-hour prayer marathons, during Benedict XVI’s pontificate and in the early years of Francis’ papacy, Venturi said Feb. 4.

He described it as a chain of prayer that formed between the two pontificates.

Started in 2014 by Pope Francis, “24 Hours for the Lord” is a penitential Lenten initiative centered on the sacrament of confession in the context of Eucharistic adoration.

Churches around the world are encouraged to participate, staying open for prayer and with priests available to hear confessions for 24 hours on the eve of the fourth Sunday of Lent. In 2025, the date is March 28-29.

While it was never explicitly said that the idea for “24 Hours for the Lord” originated with the young people’s prayer marathons, one of the members of the San Lorenzo Center at the time — Alexey Gotovskiy, now a producer in the EWTN News Vatican Bureau — remembered Archbishop Rino Fisichella, then-president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, being aware of the initiative and once celebrated Mass for them.

The Vatican has held a penitential liturgy to begin the 24 hours event most years since it started. Pope Francis surprised everyone in attendance at the first “24 Hours for the Lord” liturgy in St. Peter’s Basilica on March 28, 2014, when he went first to confession himself before entering the confessional to hear others’ confessions.

In 2023 and 2024, the liturgy was held in Roman parishes instead of the Vatican basilica. In 2025, the penance service will be celebrated at the Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle in the historic center of Rome.

Organized by the Dicastery for Evangelization, “24 Hours for the Lord” is part of the events of the 2025 Jubilee of Hope, including the weekend jubilee for priests who have been instituted as Missionaries of Mercy.

Pope Francis first instituted some priests as Missionaries of Mercy during the Jubilee of Mercy in 2016, later extending the mandate. The Vatican has given Missionary of Mercy priests the faculties to absolve sins otherwise reserved to the Holy See.

Venturi said “the celebration of the ‘24 Hours for the Lord’ is a time to be exclusive, really face to face with [Jesus]. The time of adoration is beautiful because — either in song, or in prayer, or in silence, which is the greatest ‘noise’ that touches every heart — when Jesus speaks, that’s when he breaks every chain that has been bound within each of us, even the most hidden ones, even the ones that we forget.”

“Within these strong moments of continuous prayer,” Venturi added, one approaches a priest for confession, “rediscovering Christ in that priest” and leaving all one’s internal burden behind through the confession of one’s sins.